Boy squirms a heap and Mr.
Medicine Man socks another arrer through him, cool as you please--I have
seen that done. Then the medicine man steps up, cuts off the boy's head
with his knife--holds it up plain, so everybody can see it. That looked
pretty hard to me first time I ever seen it. But now the old medicine
man takes a blanket and throws it over this dead boy. He lifts up a
corner of the blanket, chucks the boy's head under it, and pulls down
the edges of the blanket and puts rocks on them. Then he begins to sing,
and the whole bunch gets up and dances 'round the blanket. After while,
say a few minutes, medicine man pulls off the blanket--and thar gets up
the boy, good as new, his head growed on good and tight as ever, and not
a sign of an arrer on him 'cept the scars where the wounds has plumb
healed up!"

Belknap laughed long and hard at this old trapper's yarn, and weak as I
was myself, I was disposed to join him. Orme was the only one who did
not ridicule the story. Auberry himself was disgusted at the merriment.
"I knowed you wouldn't believe it," he said. "There is no use tellin' a
passel of tenderfeet anything they hain't seed for theirselves. But I
could tell you a heap more things. Why, I have seen their buffalo
callers call a thousand buffalo right in from the plains, and over the
edge of a cut bank, where they'd pitch down and bust theirselves to
pieces. I can show you bones Of a hundred such places. Buffalo don't do
that when they are alone--thay have got to be _called_, I tell you.

"Injuns can talk with other animals--they can call them others, too. I
have seed an old medicine man, right out on the plain ground in the
middle of the village, go to dancin', and I have seed him call three
full-sized beavers right up out'n the ground--seed them with my own
_eyes_, I tell you! Yes, and I have seed them three old beavers standin'
right there, turn into full-growed old men, gray haired. I have seed 'em
sit down at a fire and smoke, too, and finally get up when they got
through, and clean out--just disappear back into the ground. Now, how
you all explain them there things, I don't pretend to say; but there
can't no man call me a liar, fur I seed 'em and seed 'em unmistakable."

Belknap and the others only smiled, but Orme turned soberly toward
Auberry. "I don't call you a liar, my man," said he. "On the contrary,
what you say is very interesting. I quite believe it, although I never
knew before that your na